“The purpose of the company is to save driving and car culture,” Mr. Hagerty said flatly, as we piloted a zippy, Hagerty-insured 1972 BMW 2002 tii toward the tip of Lower Manhattan. “If we’re going to save car culture, we have to make investments outside of the core business, and really help create a whole ecosystem.”
And they’re all electrified.
With an overall length of nearly twenty feet, and a yacht-like prow, this sporting ultra-luxury vehicle does not appear at first glance to be all about utility. But it is.
As recently as the early 2000s, Mercedes regularly sold around 13,000 SLs annually. Last year, just 1300 moved off dealer lots. So what happened, and why does Mercedes continue to bother?
“At that speed, the wind creates a really big noise. You feel like an airplane taking off. When you break the wall of the air, you make some noise.”
Once a car category departs the commonplace, interest tends to pick up among enthusiasts and collectors. How else to explain the current fascination with personal luxury coupes of the ’70s and ’80s?
“Every carmaker discovers that selling their first EV is a lot harder than they blithely assume. Find me your random luxury-vehicle salesperson who is conversant in local electrical-utility incentives, charging stations, charging-station types, and voltages. There’s just a lot of additional information.”
Improbably, for a pessimistic nihilist like me, I wrote an essay about optimism for the future of the car in the face of climate catastrophe, our ruined world, and the automobile’s leading charge in catalyzing both.
Avoid these things.
And other key ways our transportation infrastructure may have to change to accommodate the ruinous mess we’ve made of the world.